Hi there! I caused a bit of confusion with yesterday's ending. I didn't mean for it to look like I split the chapter mid-sentence. I'm not that avaunt-guard. It was supposed to look like Valerie trailing off, but I didn't want to have the last words of the chapter be 'she trailed off.' I'm sorry if it looked like that.
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Chapter 41:
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"Yeah," said Valerie, "except for the part about you causing the apocalypse. No offense, but you aren't really..." she trailed off. Danny shrunk as Valerie's eyes drifted over his body. What exactly 'wasn't he really?' Mean enough? Important enough? Powerful enough? Smart enough? Interesting enough? Leading a comment with 'no offense' usually meant that whatever you were going to say next was offensive.
"It isn't important," mumbled Danny, studying the glittery, granite edge of the table.
"I think it is," said Mikey. "I mean, this is something that affe-"
"No!" snapped Danny. "It isn't. It didn't happen. It isn't going to happen. It is private, it is personal, and you have no right to that information. You only know this much because I'm trying to make a point about what utter jerks the Observants are, and how dangerous they are. Got it?"
Danny took a deep, calming, breath, closing his eyes so that he could ignore the others' reactions. "Okay. So. It wasn't going to happen anymore. But then they said something to Clockwork along the lines of 'he's your responsibility.' I don't know if that's exactly what they said, because I'm getting this third-hand at best, but it turns out that if you're talking about child ghosts, then that means something more along the lines of adoption, and screwing with familial relations is a bad thing. Super illegal, apparently, although I couldn't tell you what kind of super illegal. Taboo, but heck if I know how it fits in. So. Yeah." He opened his eyes. Everyone looked rather taken aback. 'Everyone' being everyone not Sam, Tucker, Jazz, or Fractal. (Fractal, incidentally, was still giving Dash, Kwan, Valerie, and Mikey dirty looks. Dash, interestingly enough, looked more intimidated than Mikey.) "Fractal," said Danny. He couldn't help the slightly petulant tone in his voice. "Do you have any, um, drinking water, or. Um. A drink? Or something?"
"I have something," purred an echoing voice from behind Danny. Danny flinched, hard, almost lashing out before recognizing the voice as Echo's. The ghost leaned over Danny, to put a tall, green-tinted glass down on the table with a distinct clink.
Danny took hold of it quickly, sending rivulets of condensation down the side. "Thank you," he mumbled, before taking a gulp of- not water. Really not water. Well, mostly water. But not entirely. It tasted of sour lime and sugar, salt and capsaicin. It was mixed with ectoplasm. Quite a bit of it. Excellent. He set the glass back down after draining it.
Echo had vanished again.
"So, that's the Observants. The second group is lead by Ma'at."
"Like from Egyptian Mythology?" asked Nathan.
"Yeah. That's the one. They're called the Feathers. They're more, um. Open, I guess. No one really knows how the Observants are organized, except that Issitoq is in charge. They're also more eclectic. Ma'at picks people that she likes and trusts and deputizes them to act as judges and arbiters, but otherwise there aren't requirements. They get involved in stuff you'd consider civil disputes. They act as intermediaries and, um, disinterested third parties. Impartial judges. But only if one of the people involved ask, and everyone involved agrees. Also, they have a tendency to judge the whole person, rather than the crime. They're nice, though. Fair. The couple I've met, anyway. It's hard to tell whether or not a person is a Feather by looking, because they don't have a dress code or anything. But they all have feather tokens from Ma'at. They're kind of like police badges. Um. They also have an, um, appeals process. Is that the right term?"
"Yes," said Jazz.
"But no one uses it, or hardly anyone, because if you loose the appeal, then you get eaten, and that's no fun. Yeah."
"Eaten?"
"Yeah. By Ammit, Ma'at's pet." Danny sighed. "Then, the Feathers are allied with the third group, Libra. Libra's the one that most resembles human legal systems. Or the one that tries to the most, anyway. Trials are weird in the GZ. They're obsessed with justice. I mean to say, that's their entry requirement. They're largely run by a family. Themis, her daughter Dike, their children, cousins, whatever. They're an old family. But they're okay with letting other people in, and they like having lawyers around. A lot of them are blind. A lot of them have four arms. They usually wear, like, suits, or Ancient Greek stuff. And, uh, ninety percent of them are women. That's all I really know about them. I don't think Phantom's encountered any of them, has he?"
"Nope," said Fractal.
"Uh. Then, trials..." Danny rubbed an eye. "Trials are weird in the GZ. There are a lot of cultures here, and no one could ever really agree on how trials should go, so they didn't. There's a way to determine how trials go, and that's it. Basically, everyone with a stake in the trial gets a representative, or sometimes even two or three representatives, and they all argue about it until they agree on how it should be shaped, and the formalities. Like, what the judge gets called, who's lawyer gets to talk when, who makes the decision of guilt, is there a jury... There are some other... bits in there, but... Yeah. That's about it. That's the extent of what I know."
"So the reason Phantom doesn't to be 'at odds with' these other groups is because..."
"Because one of them is out to get him, he's on good terms with the other, and the last one is comprised of people who are the direct inspirations of the Greek Goddesses of Justice and Vengeance. And all three groups are powerful enough to enforce the laws. They're scary. And you shouldn't want to get on their bad side either, because if they ever find out about..." Danny trailed off, not even wanting to talk about those things. "So. Is there anything else you want from this?"
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Adrestia flew through the Ghost Zone, Ember's latest album blasting through her headphones, papers in one hand, her club, a nightstick, really, on her hip, her whip looped around her shoulder, a collection of handcuffs dangling, jingling, like an elaborate metal skirt off her belt. She was dressed for war. Some of the ghosts she'd be going after were fairly powerful. Not a match for her gang. They were the best of the best. They'd been hunting down Taboo violators since time immemorial.
She spotted their door, a little farther along its orbit than she expected, and flew down to it. She didn't bother to knock.
"Hey!" she shouted into the lair as she blew the door open. "My peeps! I've got a job!"
The Gracious Ones' lair was a strange combination of dark, blue-tinted forest, dripping cave, and cozy sitting room. Three figures barely visible behind the stalactite/trees detached themselves from the pursuit of a fourth (likely a Taboo breaker who had been sentenced to a term of years at the Gracious Ones' mercy.)
The Gracious Ones were three women. Sisters. They had wide, leathery, bat-like wings, blue skin, and their eyes were solid, bloody red. That was about all they had in common.
The first one, who wore what looked like riot gear, touched down on the stony ground in front of Adrestia, and gave her a high-five. "Sweet Addie, let us see!"
Adrestia held the papers teasingly out of reach. "Wait for your sisters, yeah? They'd tear me apart if you got 'em first."
"Nah, no way, I'm the eldest, I'd stop them." She brushed her hair (black, and done in dozens of tiny braids) back out of her face, and angled her nose haughtily.
"As if, Alex!" scolded the second figure, who had her braids gathered into a kind of ponytail. "You don't know which one of us is older, and we all know it."
"Tess, Alex," said the third, her hair done in a single long braid, "c'mon, don't fight."
"Still playing peacemaker, huh, Meg?"
"Uh. Not doin' too well with the 'makin'' part. That's not really our thing, y'know? But I try to keep them from ripping each others' throats out, or goin' after one another with the scourges."
"Whatever, Meg," said Tess, shaking out her red dress, and adjusting her leather jacket.
Meg flipped her hair back. She was dressed like nothing so much as a soccer mom, discounting the incongruous knee pads, and the very incongruous scourge looped through her belt. "Well, as the only one of us not fixated on who's older, I've gotta do somethin,' don't I?"
"Okay, okay, we won't fight," said Alex. "Lets sit down and look at the job, huh?"
"Yeah, can I get you anythin,' Addie? Drink? We've got some chili infused vodka from the other side. It's green."
"Nah. I'm good, and I'm sure you're all eager to see this," she fanned the papers in front of her seductively.
The sisters snatched the papers from her. Tittering as they flipped through. Then they froze.
"Oh, ancients," breathed Alex.
"What?" said Adrestia, thoroughly nonplussed. She hadn't seen a reaction like this from them in, like... ever.
"Addie," said Meg, "you did read this, yeah? You didn't just, like, grab it offa one of your cousins, and run here full-speed, or whatever?"
"As if. You know how anal the Hall people are about proper paperwork. It's annoying. I mean, we still got things done way back when we didn't have any."
"Right," said Tess, drawing out the word. "But, like, you did read it?"
"Yeah."
"So," continued Tess, "you saw who the victim is? You see how that's problematic?"
Adrestia's eyebrows went up, and then came down, hard. "What? Because he's liminal? What d'you have against liminals? That's uncool."
"Nothing, dude," said Tess, equally offended.
"Yeah, Addie," said Alex. "I mean, I know your fam goes with the whole 'justice is blind, everyone is impartial, we don't keep up with the news,' thing, but you've got to at least recognize the name."
"Yeah? What was it again? Fantastic?"
"Phantom."
"Okay. Sure. And why am I supposed to recognize it?"
The sisters exchanged a glance. "Addie," said Meg, "you do remember the thing a couple years ago, when ol' Pariah woke up?"
"Yeah. I fought his armies, like everyone else."
"Well, this kid is the one who fought him. Like, he was wearin' some kinda high-tech magic armor and stuff when he did it, but he's still the one that did it."
"And he's like, y'know, connected," added Tess. "He knows the Ancients, and they like him."
"The real ones," clarified Alex, "and he beat up those two stooges Pariah put on the Council."
"Ugh," said Adrestia, taking the opportunity to flop down on the sisters' cheerful yellow couch. "So you're saying that this is going to turn into a circus. Everyone's going to feel entitled to send a rep to the pre-trial. Next thing you'll say is that he's got a beef with the Observants."
"There're rumors," confirmed Meg.
"This is going to be a headache."
